


Presence

by prairie_dust



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Gen, Insomnia, Insomniac Dean, Mark of Cain, The Executioner's Song, no overt ships, non-tactile comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 09:39:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3483428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairie_dust/pseuds/prairie_dust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his encounter with Cain, Dean finds it difficult to come back down and sleep for any amount of time, much less for four days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Presence

Dean suspected that he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

He’d accepted Sam’s offering of coffee and hope. He’d passed Castiel and left him with a reassuring pat on his shoulder, knowing that the angel sometimes placed an unusually high value on human gestures. The ones he’d figured out, at least.

He’d managed to stay calm, barely, until he was just outside of the kitchen.

Once alone in he hall, he had dropped the mask and tried to prepare himself for the assault he was about to endure.

His words and gestures had been designed so that his brother and the angel would just leave him alone.

What surprised him was that he did fall asleep, and quickly, fully dressed and sprawled out on the covers like a tired child.

\------------

Dean woke in a rage.

He’d intended to wait out the inevitable crash by himself in his room. He knew it would be a long, hard fall, like nothing he’d endured since taking the Mark-- even the aftermath of killing Abbadon wouldn’t compare to this sonofabitch. But when he’d awoken, yelling and throwing books and artifacts and-- oh god, weapons-- against the walls, Sam and Cas had sprinted to his door.

Dean heard Sam calling his name, felt an iron grip on his wrist, knew he had been hitting someone by the fresh glow in the pulpy bruises on his knuckles.

He saw Cas duck a blow. _If you kill the angel, you will never see the Blade again._

He threw another punch but tried to pull it, and then froze.

Cas spun Dean around in his confusion, got an arm around his shoulder and behind his neck, in a sleeper hold-- not tight enough to put him under but plenty enough to make the cracked ribs in his side scream. Nevermind that he couldn’t kill Cas bare-handed, he’d certainly been trying to deal some damage.

“I’m okay, Cas, I’m okay. You can let me go.”

After a heartbeat, Cas let go of him.

He stood up and glanced at Sam, who was standing warily just inside the doorway. His lip was bleeding.

“Sam, I’m so sorry” Dean said, ashamed and worried together, but Sam just held up a hand, pressing his other wrist to his lip, and shook his head.

“It’s okay, Dean, we shouldn’t have--”

“How long was I out?” Dean asked abruptly, embarrassed. His eyes still burned, his side and shoulders still felt pulled and raw.

Sam glanced at Castiel. “About half an hour.”

Half an hour. He must have only just fallen asleep, then, and the bloodlust had broken through, and the brutal frustration he felt without the knife. The only thing that quieted the need to kill was the First Blade, which warped the thirst for death into a quiet certainty that the thirst would soon be slaked. He had stopped at just one kill-- no matter now monumental-- and that had only kindled the Mark’s desperation.

\------------

He tried to sleep two more times. Every time, he woke up within a few minutes in a frenzy, throwing himself and whatever he’d replaced after the last bout across the room again and again. And each time he was even more fatigued, his eyes burned so much more, and Cas and an ever more weary Sam were there to shake him free of the last clinging tentacles of this strange exhausted rage.

So after the fourth time, Castiel put a hand on Sam’s arm and said, “You go to sleep. I’ll stay with him.”

And Dean didn’t protest.

“Let me get something from the library first,” Cas said, about to duck out of the room.

“You’re not going to read about the Mark,” Dean said flatly.

“No," Cas answered mildly. "I found a book of American story poems of the nineteenth century and find that I know nothing about them. I’ll be right back.”

Dean straightened the bedcovers, his back screaming, and stretched out on top of them. He’d only managed to take his boots off.

He was exhausted, but completely unable to rest.

He dreaded blacking out again.

Cas came in quietly with a thick, charcoal-black book and hung his coat and jacket up on the coatpegs by Dean’s wardrobe.

“Should I turn the light off?” Cas asked, settling into the chair by the smaller desk in the corner.

“No... Why, can you read in the dark?”

“Of course.”

Dean considered that. “No, leave it on. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if you’re just sitting there with the lights out.”

He stretched out on his back, willing the spasms in his shoulders to stretch and loosen. He could see Cas from the bottom corner of his eye. Elbow on the desk and his hand cupping the back of his own neck. Dean glanced down at him.

He had the same aloof, disinterested expression he wore any time he read anything.

Laying on his back made Dean’s ribs ache, and he kept glancing down at the reading angel.

He turned away, onto his less-battered side.

He heard the dry whisper of a page turn behind him. He closed his eyes.

Cas shifted in his seat ever so slightly. Did angels get uncomfortable? He’d known Cas to stand in one spot for hours. Maybe it was his borrowed grace, maybe it was fading...

His mind was racing, even though his eyes felt like they were covered in hot sand. He opened them briefly, just to experience the relief of closing them again, and tried to stop his running thoughts.

Cas turned another page.

Dean started to feel his body relax and grow heavy.

As he finished a section of whatever he was reading, Cas let his breath out in a long, quiet sigh.

Dean felt heavier and heavier.

Every time Cas finished a page, he took a breath before he turned it over.

Dean listened.

Sigh. Inhale. Page.

Sigh. Inhale. Page.

Dean jumped suddenly, heart racing, feeling anger bubbling up to break his sleep. He sat up violently.

“Dean? What happened?” Cas asked warily.

“I’m okay. I’m alright. Just a glitch.”

Cas just arched an eyebrow at him, then hmphed and turned back to his book.

The sudden action had set Dean’s side on fire, so lay on his other side. He could see Cas’ trenchcoat hanging next to his own shirts.

He closed his eyes, concentrating on reclaiming the heavy feeling of near-sleep.

Cas continued to read.

Sigh. Inhale. Page.

Dean became aware of another sound among those three, a soft intermittent sweeping.

Cas also ran his fingers down the page sometimes.

Sigh. Sweep. Ssssweep. Sigh. Inhale. Page.

Every time Cas took a breath, Dean took an even deeper one. His scalp crawled, but not unpleasantly.

He didn’t notice the drop-off into sleep, but he did experience a swift rise to wakefulness, which was disorienting since he didn't feel like he'd been asleep at all.

He opened his eyes. Saw the trenchcoat next to his shirts. Cas looking curiously over his shoulder at him.

He hadn’t woken up swinging, at least. He hadn’t dreamt anything horrible. He wasn’t particularly angry, just weary and annoyed.

This was going to be a pain in the ass.

He sat up, hissing at the needly pains around his cracked ribs. The back of his skull throbbed.

“You’ve only been asleep three hours.” Castiel was looking him over dubiously.

“It’ll have to do.” Dean stood up, stretching gently.

“We’ll have to try again later,” Cas said warningly.

“Deal.”

Cas closed his book, and they walked together to the kitchen.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by both an experience I once had in a hospital with a nurse sitting quietly with me all night as I tried desperately (even with medication) to sleep, and the phenomenon of "autonomous sensory meridian response." I also like the idea of Cas sort of figuring out how to watch over Dean while he sleeps and not have it be the creepy creepiness that Dean always pictured it to be. I know it's a late entry for a coda but life got a little Lifey.


End file.
